Method to Madness

While Diaz’s fight with Frank
Shamrock did not bring with it the unpredictability of many
other moments in his career, it produced an unlikely result. Diaz,
who broke into Bay Area MMA as a teen-ager, when Shamrock was the
king, handed him a loss in the final fight of his storied
career.

Diaz kicked off the hype for his fight with Shamrock by flipping
off the former Strikeforce
and UFC champion. Shamrock had knocked out Diaz’s mentor, Gracie,
and it was played up as a grudge match. However, during and after
the fight, Diaz showed Shamrock respect. Diaz’s striking was simply
too much for Shamrock to withstand, and the veteran succumbed to a
second-round technical knockout at the HP Pavilion.

After the fight, Diaz again expressed his respect for his opponent
before Shamrock retired. It was a surprising turn from the often
disrespectful but always authentic Diaz.

Some eyebrows were raised when UFC President Dana White announced
Nate
Diaz and Jim Miller will
fight on Fox in May. It certainly was not because Diaz-Miller made
for a bad matchup. However, the Diaz Brothers are not necessarily
custom-made for network television, and the last time they appeared
on the stage was not coincidentally also the last time CBS ever
broadcast MMA.

After Jake
Shields defeated Dan Henderson
to retain the Strikeforce middleweight title, he was interviewed
about his win over the two-time Olympian. Jason “Mayhem”
Miller, the next likely challenger, decided to get in the cage
to say a few words to promote a potential rematch between the two.
That proved to be a mistake. Shields was flanked by stablemates
Gilbert
Melendez and the Diaz Brothers. None took too kindly to Miller
interrupting their friend’s victory parade.

Within seconds, the melee was on. The Diaz Brothers were in the
middle of it, kicking and punching Miller repeatedly. It was not a
scene CBS wanted to see, and it never brought back Strikeforce. Not
that Nick
Diaz cared much: he had sent a loud-and-clear message to
someone who had disrespected a training partner and friend.

The typical game plan against Paul Daley was
well-known. A particularly dangerous striker, Daley has proven far
from lethal on the ground. Fighters who stand with Daley almost
always lose; fighters who take down Daley almost always win.
However, Diaz does not always take the easiest path, and so, in his
final Strikeforce appearance, he traded punches with Daley for five
minutes in the wildest round of the year.

When Diaz and Daley did not touch gloves and began taunting one
another at the start of the fight, it was a harbinger of what was
to come. Daley got the best of Diaz first, flooring him and nearly
finishing it with punches on the ground.

Diaz worked his way back up to his feet, and the pendulum swung
wildly. Diaz began peppering Daley with shots, forcing the Brit to
shoot for a desperation takedown.

Moments later, a recuperated Daley returned to his feet and again
started to get the best of the standup exchanges. Diaz went down,
and Daley pounded him with punches and elbows. At the point Diaz
began to recover, Daley backed off. Back on his feet, the tide
again swung in Diaz’s favor. He knocked down Daley and, this time,
was finally able to finish the fight with strikes. Only three
seconds were left in the round.

Diaz-Daley was a reminder that even Diaz’s craziest moments outside
the cage struggle to compete with the excitement he brings inside
of it.

Public Relations PenaltySept. 7, 2011 -- Las Vegas

UFC President Dana White is typically forgiving of fighter
transgressions. So when he announced on Sept. 7 that Diaz had been
yanked from a blockbuster welterweight title showdown with Georges St.
Pierre and that he might never again fight for the UFC, it
spoke loudly to how frustrated he was with the controversial
California fighter.

Diaz has never much cared for doing press, and his discomfort with
doing interviews often becomes painfully obvious. Of course, there
are a lot of fighters who dislike doing interviews but still do
them. When Diaz skipped a pair of pre-fight press conferences to
promote his fight with St. Pierre at UFC 137, a fed-up White
removed him from the main event. It was an unprecedented turn of
events in UFC history, and the fighting world was abuzz when the
decision came down.

As it turned out, White’s leniency still came back to the fore.
Diaz returned to the show in a fight against B.J. Penn, which
wound up as the headliner when St. Pierre injured himself in
training. Now, Diaz will fighting for a UFC title again, albeit an
interim crown, and a bout with St. Pierre later in the year could
be the biggest UFC pay-per-view event in years. Fans may volunteer
to shuttle Diaz to the airport to ensure the fight goes on.

Some critics suggested Diaz would not fare well returning to the
UFC for the first time in five years. He had fought against subpar
opposition and would struggle when put in with the UFC’s elite,
they claimed. Those critics were quickly silenced when Diaz gave
B.J. Penn
one of the worst beatings of his career over the course of three
rounds in Las Vegas. Penn fought gamely but could not handle Diaz’s
pressure attack. With that, Diaz announced loudly his presence in
the UFC welterweight division.

Diaz followed up his “Fight of the Night” performance against Penn
with one of the most bizarre post-fight press conferences in UFC
history. A dour Diaz seemed to have little excitement about winning
a main event against a legend or being granted a title shot in his
next fight. Rather, in an almost stream-of-consciousness series of
remarks, he complained about everything from a lack of training
partners to a referee’s decision in a Shields-Jake
Ellenberger bout that had taken place six weeks earlier.

The coup de grace was a rant about going jogging through nice areas
with fountains and picnic patios and then having to return to his
neighborhood, where people were getting robbed. Diaz sounded
vaguely like 1990s hip hop character The Madd Rapper, but he made
it clear he was not joking. It was just another night in the career
of one of the sport’s most unique figures: a transcendent fight
performance followed by a surreal post-fight spectacle. Diaz is
nothing if not entertaining.